• Azerbaijan Shuts Down Free Thought University Funded by West
  
  Championing democracy by abolishing the opposition!
  (tags: azerbaijan )
• Eurobubble, episode 1
  
  Getting a job in Brussels (5 min video)
  (tags: eu )
• Germany’s plans for treaty change – and what they mean for Britain
  
  Charles Grant reads the runes.
  (tags: eu )
• The EU’s Rubik’s cube: Who will lead after 2014?
  
  Hugo Brady rolls the dice.
  (tags: eu )

• Air Travel as ‘Rashomon’: Mammoth Wrap-up of United Airlines Theories
  
  Latest in a series of blog posts detailing UA’s recent notorious screwup.
  (tags: unitedairlines travel )
• What are they doing to Skopje?
  
  Indeed!
  (tags: macedonia )
• Mapped: Oyster Card touch ins and outs
  
  The ebb and flow of London’s commuting life
  (tags: london maps )
• Right then, Nicki Brooks, Labour candidate for MEP in the East Midlands: what did you do?
  
  She selected herself, apparently!
  (tags: ukpolitics )
• When Dickens met Dostoevsky
  
  An extraordinary scholarly hoax/troll.
  (tags: hoax scholarship )

Parasites were not allowed the dignity of names, but under the circumstances Hezzka acknowledged that the beast was called Mr Jottipher.

The militant turtle-like Chelonians are a particularly entertaining creation of Gareth Roberts’, here attempting to take over the planet Zamper, a building yard for warships with its own intriguing secrets of who is really in charge, and how. The story actually reminded me quite a lot of The Leisure Hive, and that in a very good way, though the settings are quite different. The Doctor and companions Benny, Chris and Roz get a little crowded out of the plot by the bullying Chelonians, but that’s all right – the Tardis crew will be back in the next book.

Current:
Swallows And Amazons by Arthur Ransome – almost finished
After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, by Nancy Kress (Hugo novella) – halfway through

Last books finished: (both finished today)
Zamper, by Gareth Roberts (Doctor Who New Adventure)
Bring up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel

Next books:
The Blade Itself, by Joe Abercrombie; 1632, by Eric Flint; Father Time by Lance Parkin (Eighth Doctor Adventure); The Emperor's Soul, by Brandon Sanderson (Hugo novella)

• 878,300 Aren’t Cheating the System
  
  The truth behind the very dodgy figures.
  (tags: ukpolitics )

‘I’m just looking after the museum for a friend. I guess you could call me the Curator. How does that sound’? He looked at her eagerly.
‘Not very good,’ admitted Kate. ‘Don’t you have a name?’
I’m between names at the moment.’ The man looked sheepish. ‘I am having a holiday from them.’

Last week’s Doctor Who episode had a child reading a book called Summer Falls, by Amelia Williams – obviously a reference to recently departed companion Amy Pond, that being her married name. The BBC have released this as an ebook, as was done with the Melody Malone book from The Angels Take Manhattan (The Angel’s Kiss) last year. This time round, though, it’s very definitely meant to be the same book that we see on screen (The Angel’s Kiss definitely was just another book by the same name, not the one read by the Doctor and Amy on screen). It’s an excellent spooky story of young Kate in a West Country seaside village in the 1950s (though the local technology seems to date it more recently), the mysterious tall thin fast-talking floppy-haired bloke looking after the museum, and a set of mystical objects brought together to isolate the village and revive The Lord of Winter. It reminded me a bit of The Dark Is Rising, not that I know that particularly well. We will see if it has any further relationship with this season’s ongoing plot.

I see GoodReads reviewers complaining about poor editing, but I must say I spotted very few problems with my version downloaded on Friday; perhaps they fixed the issues in the meantime. My own impression was that this was a cut above the usual Who fiction for younger readers, both in imagination and in quality of style, and I was trying to work out who could have written it. But all is revealed on the last page – the author is James Goss, who for my money is the best writer of Who books around at present. I should have guessed.

And yes, Chapter 11 is a little bit sad.

“I actually helped a politician to become prime minister in his country.” Can she say who? “It breaks my heart to say it, because he was murdered before his inauguration. I dare not say who, I could be in fear of my life.”

– Carole Ann Ford.

The Brigadier saw the Doctor’s image, took an incredulous step forward and came close to clutching his head. ‘Oh, good grief! What’s he up to now? Doctor! Doctor! I told you not to try any more of these experiments. Come back here at once, man!’

Now that I’ve read all of the First and Second Doctor novels, I’m getting started on the Third Doctor, with this excellent pastiche of King Kong: the Doctor and Liz, and eventually UNIT as well, are dragged back to the Pacific in 1934 where an alien presence is threatening to destroy the world as we know it, and at the same time must deal with leakage from a parallel timeline. Very entertaining, with an ingeniously imagined alien which finds our planet too cold for it to function, and a villain who is not so much evil as just vain and not very bright; I think this is the best of Bulis’s Who books that I have read (and I have read seven others).

• Grubby Osborne’s crude opportunism is capitalising on fear (Sarah Teather)
  
  "If your empathetic instincts have been too dulled to feel a common humanity with those at the bottom of the hierarchy of public approval, remember this: the abuse that is hurled on to those on the bottom eventually infects us all. "
  (tags: ukpolitics )
• Boston in 1860 vs 2012
  
  A brilliant historical contrast
  (tags: photos )
• Funniest Roger Ebert Quotes: His Best Movie Take Downs
  
  "I would rather eat a golf ball than see this movie again."
  (tags: funny films )
• 15 Mid-Century Modern Dream Homes that will Kill Your Children
  
  The clean lines, the geometric decorative elements, the seamless blending of indoor and outdoor space… I sure do love mid-century modern architecture. Do you know what I love more? My children. And that is why I will never live in my MCM dream home. Because mid-century modern architecture is designed to KILL YOUR CHILDREN. (Also, moderately clumsy or drunk adults)
  (tags: architecture )

Or almost. First broadcast 28 September 1990.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

A sphenic number is the product of three distinct prime numbers. The lowest sphenic numbers are:

30 = 2 x 3 x 5
42 = 2 x 3 x 7
66 = 2 x 3 x 11
70 = 2 x 5 x 7

If two consecutive numbers are both sphenic, they are called sphenic twins:

230 = 2 x 5 x 23
231 = 3 x 7 x 11

285 = 3 x 5 x 19
286 = 2 x 11 x 13

429 = 3 x 11 x 13
430 = 2 x 5 x 43

I have not seen the phrase used anywhere, but it seems to me that a series of three consecutive sphenic numbers ought to be called sphenic triplets. 2013 is the first of the third lowest set of sphenic triplets.

1309 = 7 x 11 x 17
1310 = 2 x 5 x 131
1311 = 3 x 19 x 23

1885 = 5 x 13 x 29
1886 = 2 x 23 x 41
1887 = 3 x 17 x 37

2013 = 3 x 11 x 61
2014 = 2 x 19 x 53
2015 = 5 x 13 x 31

I have not calculated the next sphenic triplets; the above is quite enough.

I suppose that there must be an infinite number of sphenic triplets; I cannot see why there should be an upper limit.

It is impossible to have four consecutive sphenic numbers, because every fourth number is divisible by four and therefore cannot be sphenic.

So how is your morning going? My train is running late and I will certainly miss my connection.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

I'm going to look back on these posts after all the awards have been announced, and see whether the online ownership statistics have any use at all.

	Goodreads		Librarything
	number	average	number	average
The Dog Stars, Peter Heller	8399	3.95	600	4.06
Angelmaker, Nick Harkaway	2131	4.04	391	3.98
2312, Kim Stanley Robinson	1897	3.41	334	3.56
Dark Eden, Chris Beckett	215	4.09	56	4.12
Intrusion, Ken MacLeod	163	3.40	96	3.78
Nod by Adrian Barnes	23	4.61	7	5

NB that only one Librarything user has rated Nod, which is why that number is italicised.

Full shortlist is here.

I confess I had not heard of The Dog Stars, but it has way more readers than the others – getting on for twice as many GoodReads users as the other five combined.

Also interesting that the very few who have read Nod (or possibly NOD), which I also hadn't heard of, seem to rate it very highly.

But what fueled my fire, what bolstered my righteous rage, was the thought that Captain America, and all the other heroes of my comic book fantasies, would not let this stand. (Jennifer Margret Smith, “The Captain in the Capitol: Invoking the Superhero in Daily Life”)

Mad Norwegian Press must be pretty pleased to have two books in the running for Best Related Work in this year’s Hugos (the other being Chicks Unravel Time). It is less my cup of tea, to be honest; my knowledge of comics is rather inferior to my knowledge of Doctor Who, and this book is clearly for enthusiasts. (I was also a bit puzzled to find that the foreword is by a man, and there are two interviews with male creators, which seems to me to contaminate the “Chicks…” brand.)

However, there were some interesting pieces. Jennifer Margret Smith’s very political chapter (see quote above) spoke to me, though, and I found the two chapters on cosplay.(by Erica McGillivray and Anika Milik) very informative (perhaps because the authors did not assume much familiarity with the subject from the readership). Other chapters recounting the authors’ love for this or that character or author I generally skipped. There are also some interesting stories about being female in a social environment that is male and not free of misogyny – though perhaps fewer than I had expected. This is generally a feelgood book by and for those who have stayed the course.

I’m afraid this won’t be at the top of my Hugo ballot, but it may not be at the bottom either.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

• The revolution starts in the ATOS smoking area – welfare addiction & dependency
  
  The UK govt’s war on the vulnerable.
  (tags: ukpolitics disability )
• Change to disability benefits appeals process could leave people penniless
  
  1) take the money away, 2) prevent any complaining about it.
  (tags: ukpolitics disability )
• Disability benefit reforms: ‘It’s about more than the cuts, and more than the Paralympics’
  
  The activists speak.
  (tags: ukpolitics disability )
• Mixed messages
  
  I get interviewed on Serbia/Kosovo talks (which failed).
  (tags: serbia kosovo my media )

Current (all started on 1 April):
The Eye of the Giant by Christopher Bulis (Doctor Who Past Doctor Adventure, with 2rd Doctor, Liz Shaw and UNIT) – about half way through
Swallows And Amazons by Arthur Ransome (was top of friends-list poll) – a quarter of the way through
Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (Christmas book, still working through the pile) – a quarter of the way through
Chicks Dig Comics ed. Lynne M. Thomas and Sigrid Ellis (Hugo nominee) – a bit over half way through

Last book finished:
The Lady and the Unicorn, by Tracy Chevalier

Next books:
After The Eye of the Giant, it will be Zamper by Gareth Roberts; after Chicks Dig Comics, I will start the Hugo novellas; after Bring Up The Bodies, I'll probably try Joe Abercrombie's The Blade ItselfSwallows and Amazons, Eric Flint's 1632.

• A New Map Of The U.S., Created By How Our Dollar Bills Move
  
  Fascinating – New England exists as an entity, New Mexico doesn’t!
  (tags: maps usa )

• Extended: Free accounts for new members « The LibraryThing Blog
  
  Brilliant news – whether you use GoodReads or not, LT is a great fallback.
  (tags: books )
• Savita Halappanavar death report finds foetus, not mother, was main focus
  
  Husband not satisfied.
  (tags: savita )
• The European Parliament’s move to Dresden
  
  Great piece by Hugo Brady and Jan Techau.
  (tags: EU )
• Tainted Trial of Sahrawi Civilians
  
  Human Rights Watch statement.
  (tags: westernsahara )

I'm fundamentally a liberal in my political ideology; I want to see a fairer society, I think the state has a limited (but not zero) role in bringing that about, and in terms of the UK's internal politics I would like to see electoral reform.

I joined both the Liberals and the SDP as a student (the only vote I've ever cast in a Westminster election was for Shirley Williams in 1987), voted for the merger both times and was a founder member of the Lib Dems, as they became; I was a candidate for Cambridge City Council in 1990, an agent in 1991, and chair of the Northern Ireland branch of the party (a not terribly onerous responsibility) for most of the mid-90s. I haven't lived in the UK since 1997, though I have maintained my membership of the Brussels branch of the party – a friendly group of people to hang out with occasionally.

I was grudgingly supportive of the coalition agreement of 2010 – which was basically unavoidable, given the numbers delivered by the electoral system and the personalities delivered by the Labour Party – on the basis that the fixed term parliament provisions meant that the Lib Dems would be less likely to be snookered by Tory manœuvring, and that the AV referendum offered a chance for change to the electoral system. More on the former point below; the latter has been brutally analysed from both sides. It's difficult to blame Clegg personally or the Lib Dems in general for the referendum's failure, though their mistakes certainly contributed to the disaster of the campaign, which has certainly killed electoral reform in the UK for a generation.

There are a couple of widely made criticisms about the Lib Dems in government which I don't share. I was always dubious about the proposed reforms to the House of Lords, and was not at all sorry when their collapse also brought down the planned redrawing of constituencies – two birds with one stone – though this was also a Lib Dem policy failure. On tuition fees, the mistake was the initail pledge not to raise them, when it was already clear that this was unimplementable.

However, I fear that the Lib Dems are being captured by some of the worst parts of Tory policies. Clegg's recent declarations on secret courts and immigration are, quite simply, a betrayal of what I thought he and the party stood for. But in particular the many appalling stories of harassment of the disabled (not just from professional campaigners – see for instance 's first person account here, here and here) simply disgust me; this is the state waging war on the most vulnerable members of society. To quote Harry Wilcock, I am a Liberal and I am against this sort of thing.

I know it's a biased source, but this list in today's Guardian of the changes being made by the coalition to the UK's benefits payments has given me further pause for thought. I have been out of the UK for over 16 years now, and will probably never again either contribute to or benefit from its social security system. But the picture is very clear – that the State's support to those who need it is to be implemented according to ideological prejudice, rather than on the basis of actual need. I am against this sort of thing too. (And I fear that the Labour Party would be exactly the same when back in government, given its vote on Workfare.)

I still like the fact that the Lib Dems are serious about Europe (though with no Lib Dems in the Foreign Office), serious on constitutional reform (if visibly ineffective in practice), and less bad than the other two main parties on other issues that seem to me to matter. In particular, I like and respect all of the party’s MEPs, who continue to work hard for things I believe in, and they have my full personal support, individually and collectively. But "less bad" is no longer good enough for me. I don't believe I'm a party member any more, having let my subscription quietly lapse last year, so I can't exactly resign in a huff. The one thing I can do is request that this LJ no longer be syndicated to the LibDemBlogs aggregator. Visitors of all parties and of none remain welcome here. But I am no longer willing to stand up and be counted with the Lib Dems.

Non-fiction 2 (YTD 7)
The Unfree French, by Richard Vinen
What’s Up With Catalonia? The causes which impel them to the separation, translated and edited by Liz Castro

Fiction (non-sf) 3 (YTD 5)
A Rag, a Bone, a Hank of Hair, by Jonathan Gash
The Castle, by Franz Kafka
The Lady and the Unicorn, by Tracy Chevalier

sf (non-Who) 10 (YTD 18)
The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula Le Guin
Intrusion, by Ken MacLeod
2312, by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Flight of the Ravens, by Chris Butler
Adrift on the Sea of Rains, by Ian Sales
Observatory, by Daragh Carville
How To Train Your Dragon, by Cressida Cowell
How To Cheat A Dragon’s Curse, by Cressida Cowell
How To Twist A Dragon’s Tale, by Cressida Cowell
How To Seize A Dragon’s Jewel, by Cressida Cowell

Doctor Who 5 (YTD 17)
Players, by Terrance Dicks
Endgame, by Terrance Dicks
World Game, by Terrance Dicks
The Spear of Destiny, by Marcus Sedgwick
Sky Pirates!, by Dave Stone

Comics 4 (YTD 6)
Berlin – A City Divided: Chronicles, by Susanne Buddenberg and Thomas Henseler
Bruss. Brussels in Shorts, ed. Ilke Froyen and Piet Joostens
Saucer Country, vol 1: Run, by Paul Cornell
Fugitive, by Tony Lee

~5,900 pages (YTD 13,500)
9/24 (YTD 14/53) by women (Castro, Chevalier, Le Guin, Cowell x 4, Buddenberg, Froyen and contributors)
0/24 (YTD 0/53) by PoC – time to change that.

Rereads: The Left Hand of Darkness (1, YTD 3)
Acquired 2011 or before: 12 (The Left Hand of Darkness, The Lady and the Unicorn, Endgame, Sky Pirates!, The Castle, World Game, Players, Fugitive, How to Twist a Dragon’s Tale, How to Cheat a Dragon’s Curse, How To Seize A Dragon’s Jewel) – YTD 21
Acquired 2012: 2 (A Rag, a Bone, and a Hank of Hair, How To Train Your Dragon) – YTD 12
Acquired 2013: 10 (Intrusion, 2312, Berlin – A City Divided, The Flight of the Ravens, Adrift on the Sea of Rains, The Spear of Destiny, What’s up with Catalonia?, Observatory, Bruss. Brussels in shorts, Saucer Country: Run) – YTD 20

Coming next (perhaps):
Chicks Dig Comics, ed. Lynne M. Thomas and Sigrid Ellis
Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
Swallows And Amazons, by Arthur Ransome
1632, by Eric Flint
The Quantum Thief, by Hannu Rajaniemi
Doors Open, by Ian Rankin
The Last Mughal, by William Dalrymple
A History of the World in 100 Objects, by Neil MacGregor
The Peoples of Middle-Earth, by Christopher Tolkien
Toward the End of Time, by John Updike
Daystar and Shadow, by James Weldon Johnson
Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins
The Irish Constitutional Revolution of the Sixteenth Century, by Brendan Bradshaw
Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol
Starship Fall, by Eric Brown
The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
Danny the Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl
Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury
The Jagged Orbit, by John Brunner
Desert, by J. M. G. Le Clezio
Confessions of Zeno, by Italo Svevo
The Eye of the Giant, by Christopher Bulis
Zamper, by Gareth Roberts
Father Time, by Lance Parkin
Tesseract, by Tony Lee

‘Is Brussels always so quiet?’ Nicolas asked, picking bits of wool off his tunic.

Not a lot of best-selling novels set in fifteenth-century Belgium, though I have to say I wasn’t hugely satisfied with this one; bad boy artist Nicolas travels between Paris and Brussels impregnating young women, one of them the blind daughter of the weaver of the tapestry which he has designed. There’s a fair bit about art and patterns of patronage and so on, but I felt the writer was a little too much in love with her irresponsible hero.

A collection of linked Tenth Doctor graphic stories, the first two issues set in Hollywood in 1926 with the Doctor collaborating with film star Archie Maplin (an obvious duplicate of Charlie Chaplin) and the following four taking him through a struggle with the Shadow Proclamation, or more particularly with Mr Finch / Brother Lassar from School Reunion, aided by a Draconian, an Ogron and a Sontaran. Lee is sensitive to his material and there were several great squee moments for my fanboy heart (including shoutouts to Big Finish continuity).

Unfortunately I felt the artists failed to quite capture David Tennant's (or Anthony Stewart Head's) facial features, with Matthew Dow Smith, doing the second run of four issues, slightly better than Al Davison, doing the first two. (The frame shown here is Smith rather than Davison.) If you can swallow that, the story is quite good, and I will work through the next volumes happily.

Rather than wait for the Hugo Voter Pack to become available, I downloaded a few of the nominated works available in electronic form after last night’s announcement, and selected this nominee for Best Graphic Story to read first.

Paul Cornell takes us to New Mexico, where the governor has just announced her candidacy for President, and at the same time she and her husband are mixed up in a peculiar incident of apparent alien abduction. It isn’t utterly dissimilar to his London Falling, which also has establishment figures from unusual backgrounds (his varied police squad) having to deal with the unexpectedly sfnal in their work.

Cornell deconstructs the lore of UFOlogy entertainingly (largely through a massive infodump in the last of the six issues collected here, issued by a character who talks to the Pioneer plaque people); meanwhile sinister political forces which want to bring down the governor are at least partly aware of what is going on, and conspiracies simmer. It’s good fun, and I hope I enjoy the other three nominees in this category as much (I won’t be reading Schlock Mercenary).

I asked young F the other day if I might borrow his Cressida Cowell collection. He went and rummaged in his shelves, and came back with three books, apologising that the fourth in the series was missing. "Are these the first three, then?" I asked. "No," he replied, "these are the first, fifth and tenth!" I had no idea that there were so many, but at least I can now say that I have given them a fair sampling. He also later found the fourth book as well.

The series concerns the adventures of a teenage Viking and his faithful but rather useless dragon; although he is the chief's son, he is the weedy boy of his cohort in the tribe, and must find success through superior brain-power, linguistic knowledge and as it turns out predestination as well. The Viking culture depicted will ring rather few bells with readers who know anything about the era. The tribe appears to have no girls (in later books a girl called Camicazi from a neighbouring tribe appears). No other culture apart from the Vikings and the dangerous multicoloured (and occasionally enslaved) dragons is shown, though the Romans are off-screen. The names are rather excruciating (our hero is Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, his father is Stoick the Vast, and his mother is Valhallarama) and the dragon language a bit embarrassing; the stories are exciting but not terribly edgy. I rather preferred the film.

Book 1: How To Train Your Dragon

As Hiccup somersaulted for the second time he thought to himself, Now THIS, this really IS the worst moment of my life.

The origin story, where Hiccup bonds with a rather useless dragon called Toothless and then must help his tribe deal with a giant dragon which turns up and threatens to eat them all.

Book 4: How To Cheat A Dragon's Curse

On the west of the map, someone had scribbled out the great tumbling waterfall which on most Viking maps was marked 'End of the World', and replace it with a crude charcoal drawing of an island it called AMERICA.

I liked this the most of the four; to save his friend, Hiccupmust retrieve a mysterious vegetable called a potato from a vicious neighbouring tribe who have found it in a new land to the west. The is a lot of humour about how America and the potato are actually taboo topics among the Vikings who ought not to have discovered them yet, and Camicazi is a welcome foil to Hiccup.

Book 5: How To Twist A Dragon's Tale

I have found another Lover, who has already brought me the Fire-Stone, and I am going to marry HIM.

Hiccup encounters a legendary hero who turns out to be his mother's ex-boyfriend, and together they must prevent a volcano from erupting.

Book 10: How To Seize A Dragon's Jewel

The truth is, it is often difficult to explain things to a parent. And most definitely it s particularly difficult when your mother is hunting you at top speed through a dark forest under the impression tat you are the Enemy of the Wilderwest.

This seems to be the middle book of a climactic sequence in which villains from previous volumes have come together and enslaved Hiccup's village, while plotting magical domination of the known world (or at least the Viking archipelago). It's 400 pages, whereas the other three are in the low to mid 200s. The is a fairly spectacular set of scenes around a geographically improbable desert, and Hiccup must deal separately with mummy and daddy issues. I did not feel the urge to seek out any more in the series to see how it ends.

I'd hesitate to recommend these, to be honest. Maybe I am too pedantic, but I prefer my fictional Vikings to be a bit more like real Vikings, and while of course one must lose some verisimilitude once pet dragons have been brought into the picture, I think it's not unfair to expect a little better than this.

• Irish EU Presidency, EU Presidency : 100objects
  
  Free ebook about Irish history (until 31 March)!
  (tags: Ireland )
• Why dinosaurs are the ultimate childhood companion
  
  They’re like dragons, but real.
  (tags: books children )
• 2013 Hugo Awards | The Hugo Awards
  
  Nominations announced: 11/18 women in fiction categories!
  (tags: sf )

	Goodreads		Librarything
	number	average	number	average
Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas, John Scalzi	11000	3.82	729	3.85
Blackout, Mira Grant	4453	4.20	277	4.09
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, Lois McMaster Bujold	2167	4.19	348	4.17
Throne of the Crescent Moon, Saladin Ahmed	1907	3.61	217	3.54
2312, Kim Stanley Robinson	1859	3.41	296	3.52

Well, there’s a clear front-runner. Full nominations list is here.